LINCOLN- Just weeks before the 2024 legislative session begins, nine of the 10 lawmakers representing Lancaster County joined together on Monday at Union College for a town hall to preview the issues they're looking to tackle come next year. The delegation present included Sens. Ballard, Bosn, Bostar, Brandt, Clements, Conrad, Dorn, Dungan, Raybould, and Wishart.

Many lawmakers at the town hall highlighted workforce development as a means to address the state's worsening brain drain. According to Sen. George Dungan, solutions to this issue will be multi-faceted and nuanced, and will attempt to avoid becoming a culture war issue. "Nebraska, I think, for the better part of the last many decades, has been a sort of bastion of reasonableness amongst a lot of this ire that we've seen in a lot of other states," said Dungan.

Sen. Carolyn Bosn brought up licensure issues seen in industries like hair care, teaching, and law enforcement, highlighting that people who are licensed in other states must often go back to school in Nebraska after moving here to obtain a similar license. "I don't know that they cut hair differently here than they do in Iowa, but I can't imagine they do it that differently," said Bosn, "I don't think that's a good use of our time or our money."

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